


A Separate Piece of the World

by hamitme



Category: NADDPOD - Fandom, Not Another D&D Podcast
Genre: M/M, hill home description, location description, missing each other, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamitme/pseuds/hamitme
Summary: A young boy looks out over Hill Home, and thinks about his separation from another.A very short story with a description of Hill Home, and a look into what's on Erlin's mind.





	A Separate Piece of the World

A river spread out down across the bottom of the valley, splitting the lands in two with its great flow and prosperous stream. This stream fed off in branches into fields of landowners hoping the year would serve plentiful for their crop. Houses dotted across the valley like the freckles on so many hands tanned by the sun, and great but simple arcane machines sat in fields, cooling off after a long day of work. The sun was setting over the sky, and the lights hanging from posts in the city began to give off their golden glow as day ushered night in.  
And in the city, under the streetlamps’ warmth, storefronts sat neatly in rows, facing the paved street and was sprinkled in dust that managed to sneak its way in. Raucous laughter poured out of tavern doors as they were opened, punctuating the settling quiet air outside.  
Aside from the roads lined with businesses, neighborhoods stretched and climbed slowly up the sides of the hills, their proud houses sitting in rows facing down across the valley of fields and country homes below.  
Night in the country was full of aromas like the sweet smell of freshly cut hay set out to dry, and sharp dust that rose from the gravel roads that split the lands apart. Crickets began to harmonize with the chords of a piano drifting through the curtains of a window into the unmoving air of night in the country.  
It was here, inside the house with its drifting melodic piano, that a young boy sat gazing out into the night alone.

In a wicker swing chair sat this young boy, who looked out from the painted white porch that glowed under the lights that came from inside.

The field looked out to was calm and at ease, no wind to stir the leaves on trees and only the melancholy sigh of insects that hummed their song that belonged to the earth.

A volume rested in his hands, a worn tome with corners bent and a faded name written inside that was not his own. He mindlessly fingered the cover, and the note that stuck up over the pages inside the book, a note that he had kept in loving condition, despite the numerous times he had pulled it out and read it.

He knew this country vaguely, but he knew this love letter word for word.

The screen door pushed open, and a figure emerged holding a mug in each hand. She didn’t acknowledge her brother, but sat down in the creaking swing next to him, and passed him a mug.  
He took it in his hands and found himself reminiscing inside its swirling contents.

The boy thought of a previous land, his home, a mountain rising out of the sea to touch the clouds with the hands of a castle’s spires.

He remembered the neighborhood he lived in, when he was only separated by a few tree-lined streets from the neighborhood of the one who had pressed a well used handbook into his hands and departed.

It was hard, like the sun that pounded down on workers in the field, to be away when things just began.

It was hard, like hands working in the field under the burning sun, to have no answers to questions unable to be asked.

It was hard, not knowing what was going on in a separate piece of the world, and when a love letter was left re-read but an answer undelivered.

The boy brought the mug to his lips, his eyes closing into inky blackness, until a pair of eyes from a previous time took shape in the fold. This memory was familiar to him, this moment often seeped into the cracks of his mind, reminding him as if he could ever forget.

How could he forget a first such as that?

Those eyes, playful green, but shaped with sincerity that sent tremors down, and pulses in his heart, mirroring those of the same time.

And a first, an instant, an instinct, that had pulled him towards those sincere sparkling green eyes, and pecked lips smiling.

Blush sent kisses of pink along his cheeks and a smile crept up along the rim of his mug.

The boy held tightly onto these memories, unknowing that in a separate piece of the world, the eyes, the heart, that wrote the love letter, held on in a similar way.

Though separated, by rows and rows of vague farmland, a link, like the book that rested in the boy’s arms, connected him outside the plains, across the wide branching river, and over the valley’s hillside, to this separate piece of the world. To a pair of wondering green eyes that gazed at another link, a lovingly kept photograph of a boy who had shared a first he would never forget.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this on a whim in my journal, because I sat down with it and the first thing that came to me was, "I want to write about some scenery." It morphed into a piece about Beverlin because that ship is just so good and sweet fight me.  
> This setting is also heavily inspired by John Steinbeck's book "East of Eden," which makes me think and write poetically a while after reading, so I dipped into that feeling.


End file.
